CSULB streamlines scholarship management,
increasing fund utilization by 30%

California State University, Long Beach serves nearly 40,000 students annually,
making it the second largest of the 23-school California State University
system and one of the largest universities in California by enrollment.
Prior to implementing Blackbaud Award Management, CSULB was using a
combination of homegrown systems, paper applications, and various other
methods to manage all its different scholarship processes across campus.

Consequently, the university was decentralized in its approach, and the
campus was often left with thousands in unused scholarship funds.
Blackbaud’s cloud scholarship management software enabled CSULB to bring
all its scholarship awards into one single platform while still meeting the
needs of its individual schools and colleges. Assistant Director of University
Scholarships Oliver Mamangun explained, “One reason we weren’t utilizing all of our scholarships was because we didn’t have the tools and data to help us
effectively administer our scholarship funds. Blackbaud Award Management
has assisted us with providing our campus the tools and data necessary to
begin streamlining our processes and provide a single point of entry for
our students to access scholarships. Since implementation, our utilization
is close to 100% for all funds housed within the system.”

Centralizing Scholarship Management

By centralizing its award scholarship processes, the CSULB Financial Aid
and Scholarship office always has the latest student data and visibility into
which awards have been accepted or need to be re-awarded. “It was a very
‘wild, wild west’ before, and Blackbaud Award Management allowed us to
bring all our funds into one central system,” Mamangun said.

Awarding scholarships is a huge priority at CSULB. Last year, 76% of its
undergraduate students received some form of financial aid. Mamangun
shared that the amount of data available in Blackbaud Award Management
has made a significant impact. “Since being involved in implementation of
the system, I have discovered other sources for funding scholarships outside
our philanthropic 49er Foundation, such as grants, contracts, and auxiliary
sources, and I hope to include these in the system in the future.”

A common challenge universities have is finding the right student for a
particular scholarship fund based on its criteria. The data within Blackbaud
Award Management provides key insights into which funds are not being
utilized and helps financial aid leaders then determine why. “It helped us
match students with the scholarships that have a stricter criterion,”
Mamangun said. “We also redesigned longstanding agreements to better fit
our student population and, in some cases, added criteria where the
scholarship criteria may have been too general, allowing us to limit the
amount of applications to review.”

Awarding in the Future

CSULB saw an immediate increase in applications within the first three years
of using Blackbaud Award Management, and it remains steady. If needed,
the team can edit a scholarship application at a moment’s notice directly
within the system. “While we haven’t changed our application yet, we
appreciate the ability to customize each form and look forward to future
enhancements and the continued innovation we see Blackbaud delivering in
its solutions,” Mamangun said.

Mamangun is working toward a future where scholarship funds are set as
renewable opportunities and plans to manage them with the click of a
button. “I know there is so much more we can do with Blackbaud Award
Management, and I can’t wait to discover all the additional benefits it
offers.”